PSO heats up for world premiere

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Friday’s Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra concert started tepidly, but the brass brought the heat after intermission and rescued a dull evening with a gripping world premiere by Pittsburgh composer Reza Vali.

The conductor was music director Manfred Honeck; the venue was Heinz Hall; the piano soloist was a surprise appearance by Juho Pohjonen for his PSO debut after the originally billed soloist, Igor Levit, canceled for health reasons. Mr. Pohjonen hacked another notch in this season’s Beethoven cycle with Beethoven’s Concerto No. 4 in G major. While technically proficient, Mr. Pohjonen’s interpretation felt lifeless and devoid of character, at odds with the charm of the fourth concerto.

Also a disappointment, the opening number, Mozart’s Symphony No. 33 in B-flat major was fine, but it lacked clarity in articulation, particularly in the violins.

The second half of the concert was a significant improvement. Liszt’s “Les Preludes” was the highlight of the evening, Mr. Honeck leading with an ear for balance. The wind chords felt especially warm this evening. I’ve wagged a finger at the brass lately for “outblowing” the other sections, but this Friday that dynamic gusto brought the music to life and revived the evening in both the Liszt and the closing work, Wagner’s grandiose Prelude to “Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.”

As to the world premiere, Mr. Vali’s music used Persian tonality, interjecting microtones between certain pitches to create new scales. The piece opened with a low drone and cello solo — different instruments gave improvisatory solos, and the work built to a huge, rhythmically complex and harmonically crunchy peak before dying back down to drone and solo several times.

Principal clarinetist Michael Rusinek’s solos were especially gorgeous, winding impossibly long phrases silkily into the higher range of the instrument. The work ended with a literal bang, marking the end of the third PSO world premiere this season, each uniquely flavored but all adhering to a cohesive theme.